Syrian peace talks take a 'positive step'

Nick Cumming-Bruce

Geneva: After days of deadlock and dispute, Syrian peace talks appeared to inch forward when a spokesman for the opposition said the Syrian government had agreed to negotiate within a framework that calls for it to give way to a transitional government.

The spokesman, Louay Safi, spoke to reporters after emerging from a two-hour meeting with the delegation representing President Bashar al-Assad at the UN headquarters. He said the talks had made "a positive step forward, because for the first time now we are talking about the transitional governing body".

The two sides were scheduled to meet separately in the afternoon with Lakhdar Brahimi, the special UN envoy for Syria. Talks involving both delegations were scheduled to continue on Thursday and Friday, when the opposition intends to discuss issues like the size and responsibilities of a transitional government, Mr Safi said.

Regime delegation member Buthaina Shaaban confirmed that talks on the Geneva communique had begun, but said "the first item is to stop violence which now has turned into terrorism".

Pointing to extremist Islamist groups among rebel forces, the regime has accused the opposition and its foreign supporters of backing "terrorism" in the mould of al-Qaeda.

"The talks have been positive today actually, because they spoke about terrorism, they spoke about Geneva I," Ms Shaaban said.

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"The only difference between us and them, which is a major difference, is we want to discuss Geneva I item by item starting from the first item ... They want to jump to the item that speaks about the transitional government, and they're only interested in being in government, while what we are interested in is to stop this horrid war."

That appeared to represent an advance from the position staked out by the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, when the current conference opened in Montreux, Switzerland, last week. At that time, Mr Moallem dismissed any idea of transferring power. It was not immediately evident whether the government's reported shift was one of tone or of substance.

"They seemed to be more ready to discuss the issue" of a transitional government, Mr Safi said of the Assad delegates. But he acknowledged that pitfalls still lie ahead. And he said the government's negotiators still wanted to "change the order of the discussion in a way that will make the talks not successful."

The two sides have apparently not made any progress so far on humanitarian issues related to the conflict, like prisoner exchanges or getting aid supplies to the besieged residents of the Old City section of Homs.

The desperation there of civilians, who have been largely cut off for more than a year, was detailed in a video recorded appeal posted online this week by Father Francis, the patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church.

"We, Muslims and Christians, live in hard conditions and suffer from a lot of problems, the biggest of which is hunger - people cannot find food," he is heard to say in the video, speaking in Arabic with English subtitles. "We do not want to die out of pain and hunger."

International aid workers in the region said they were worried that the attention being paid in Geneva to the Homs situation was obscuring the plight of Syrians trapped in other areas besieged by either government or opposition forces. The United Nations lists seven such areas in which a total of about 250,000 people are trapped.

As he prepared to board a van after discussing the state of the Geneva talks with a throng of reporters, Mr Safi appeared to retreat a bit from his initial optimism.

"These negotiations are going to be very tough," Mr Safi said. "The other party is apparently not willing to give in to the demands of the Geneva communique."